THE TURNING OF THINGS

Yes, things turn - we are past midsummer's day, age is wearying me, the weather has turned for a usual summer - wet and dismal - after such a glorious spring, albeit locked down (should that be locked up?)

  I am probably picking the raspberries before they are fully ripe but if I leave them they will be gone, inside a ravenous blackbird. Anyway they will still make good raspberry jam, the best jam.


 

 Come Saturday, suddenly I am 74 and the weather has gorn orf, low pressure steaming in from the Atlantic with gales and rain - and also thunder. It rained so heavily the water overtopped the gutters and fell in a cascade outside the kitchen doors. I stayed in (apart from dashing to pick raspberries and red currants, and all the alstroemerias for a big vase.)

The crazy camellia is still flowering.

Sunday it is still windy and wet. I am glad I mowed the lawns before this came but where the grass has been left long it is bowed down by rain and wind - makes trouser legs sodden.

I have added extra support to the lilium regale in their pots.

The local rookery have moved to our ash trees, gathering without social distancing and making a din. I go outside and two loud handclaps disperse them up the field.

I have been given a bonsai starter pack by my son. Now I can bring a little garden into the house.
But do not hold your breath, brown fingers, not green, are still with me.

This is a sad rose.

I bought some calendulas - the wrong ones it seems, not tall enough for R - but they are very orange - her favourite colour. The green bits are seedlings not weeds (so I say). 

The white plant to the right is my sister's mallow which seeds itself every year and lights up dark corners

I have it on the finest authority that the weekend has been the wettest weather since mid February. I know it was dry in the spring but it is nearly July and it was so miserable yesterday that I lit the log burner. Now Monday and the pond is full and it is still raining. Summer has arrived! Look at the battered Californian Poppies (escholzias) with their petals blasted off and soggy.

Another surprise mullein  has been flattened though this is not a yellow one.
The raspberries are, fortunately, tied up and I now have enough for some jam.

Sometimes plants appear totally out of keeping with the others close by like this fennel, one tall stem in a low growing bed. However it will stay there for now - I rather like fennel for its feathery foliage

The seasons turn, the weather turns, the clock turns and I know that there are many jobs that need to be done but . . .

One worry I have is that there seems to be parsley growing in the garden (which may mean I no longer wear the trousers in our house (did I ever?))

One of the troubles with gardens is that things GROW and GROW and suddenly one is overgrown - tress and shrubs too large, perennials spreading too much.
What was once an open area with a few trees at the top side now feels like we are living in a clearing in a wood.
I have cut back the oriental poppies to the ground, taken some cuttings off the white lilac and generally deadheaded, especially the foxgloves that are over.

And now we are past the cuckoo day - never sings beyond the first day of July - and most other birds a silent, the music has gone from the garden, just a coarse rook, magpie or pheasant to disturb the peace.